Your power bill may be including a little something extra in the coming weeks. But will it be what you deserve? Lawmakers are dividing, and Michael Pope is at the Capitol with the latest.
In the last few years, Dominion Power and Appalachian Power have been able to pocket millions of dollars in excessive profits. That’s because lawmakers froze those rates in place back in 2015. Now Delegate Terry Kilgore wants to lift the freeze and give some of that money back to ratepayers. He also wants to invest some of it in renewable sources of energy.
“A lot of the data companies. A lot of the Amazons, folks like that, they have to have renewables before they’ll even look at your area.”
Senator Chap Petersen, a Democrat from Fairfax City, says that money belongs to ratepayers and it should be returned to them. All of it. And then if Republicans want to invest in renewable energy sources, he says, that’s fine. He’d support that. But that’s a separate issue.
“They’re mixing two things together in a way. I don’t know why, perhaps to conceal what they did or to muddy the waters or try to bring in environmental groups. I don’t know.”
So now lawmakers are facing a choice: Return all those excessive profits to ratepayers or divert some of it to environmental programs.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
